Media properties include broadcast stations such as television and radio stations and other media such as cable television systems. The process by which media properties provide a rate quote to an advertiser for commercial inventory, which inventory is expressed in a units currency measured in seconds, is much different from the process used by other industries. This difference is due almost exclusively to the type and quality of information pertaining to the value of available inventory, at a particular moment in time, relative to other available inventory. Clearly, the same unit of inventory has a much different value depending upon when the inventory is required by a customer, and from a broadcast station's perspective, the likelihood that the particular unit of inventory can be sold at a later date for at least as much revenue, relative to all other remaining units for sale, and the likelihood that those units will be sold at a later date by the broadcast station.
At any particular moment, there are various quantities of inventory available by program and time segment for future sale. At the moment that a specific customer requests prices and whether inventory is available, it is important that inventory optimization take place from the station's perspective so as to maximize total station revenues. However, the broadcast industry has, to a great extent, been confused as to the meaning of optimization. The term optimization has been used almost exclusively to define parameters from the buyer's perspective, and not the broadcast station. Usually, the buyer will instruct the station to "take my budget and make it go as far as you can, given the parameters I give you." The remaining time inventory and its significance to the station has not been considered, because there has been no meaningful approach which quantifies the value of remaining commercial availability or which provides inventory information from the broadcast station's perspective to its sales personnel.
A need persists for a process to provide information to broadcast station personnel as to the real value of remaining commercial units with respect to each other, at a particular moment in time, given the probability of sale relative to total time period availabilities. There is also a need for an inventory optimization process to determine available inventory at a particular moment in time. Such a process must provide an opportunity for broadcast station personnel to know instantly which broadcast program, days and time segments are necessary to meet a customer's request based upon the needs of the station in terms of inventory optimization. Such a process must identify the value of remaining inventory at the time of the availability request, as the inventory relates to total original capacity for each program or time segment available for sale at a designated cost efficiency parameter.
These functions depend in large part on the manner in which the inventory management system calculates the value of a future program (TV) or time segment (radio). Commercially available inventory management systems such as the Maxagrid system include a yield management system which produces a pricing forecast used to determine prices for sales of commercial time based on factors such as past trends and performance data which are updated periodically in order to maintain an accurate pricing model. See generally Pricing & Rate Forecasting Using Broadcast Yield Management, B. Shane Fox, published by the National Association of Broadcasters, 1992, and Broadcast Revenue Management: Pricing Inventory Management in Today's Broadcast Environment, B. Shane Fox, published by the National Association of Broadcasters, 1997. These results can be further improved by employing an inventory utilization index ("IUI") when ranking time for sale as described in applicant's co-pending U.S. Serial No. U.S. Ser. No. 09/143,586, filed Aug. 31, 1998, the contents of which are incorporated by reference herein for all purposes. The valuations generated by the yield management system are then input to a price forecasting system which is the part of the Maxagrid software which provides a user interface for a salesperson generating rate quotations for a customer. However, even with a sophisticated approach to valuation of inventory and price forecasting, the results are limited by the accuracy of available data concerning time already sold or likely to be sold.
Media property traffic billing systems commercially available from sources such as Marketron, Columbine/JDS, CBSI, Datacount, and Computer Concepts book orders for commercial time, maintain advertising schedules, and perform related accounting functions. According to present practice, a media property using a yield management system such as the Maxagrid system generates an order which results in a confirmation, generally in printed form, that is printed out for the stations records and a copy mailed to the customer. Eventually, the order is manually entered into the traffic billing system, generally in a batchwise fashion, and subsequently the traffic billing system generates a file of order data which is imported into the yield management system. The yield management system, receiving an update from the traffic billing system, then recalculates the number of commercial units or minutes available for sale by program or time period and the resulting change in the pricing forecast, which is then input to the price forecasting system.
Due to the need to enter order data manually into the traffic billing system and the subsequent delay in updating the pricing forecast several steps later, or a delay in receiving information from the traffic billing system, there is a serious risk that an order will be placed using inaccurate availability and pricing forecast data. This may be simply a conflict over available time, i.e., selling the same time twice or overbooking for a particular program, or a more subtle problem in charging too little for a program which has in fact moved to a higher price point along a demand curve generated by the inventory management system because of orders that have already been placed but have not yet been taken into account in the pricing forecast. There is, therefore, a need for a system that can improve pricing accuracy by providing automatic updating of the pricing forecast, so that in an optimum state the effect of each order on the pricing forecast is taken into account before the next order is placed. The present invention addresses this need.
A second key factor towards enhancing the accuracy of a pricing forecast is taking into account reservations made by customers who want to hold a future time slot for future use but do not place a firm order until much nearer the time of the broadcast. Presently available systems do not take reservations or historically repeated last minute time purchases into account, further distorting the actual value of the time inventory. A comparable problem is presented by allocation of program time to large advertisers that wish to reserve large amounts of time in many small blocks.
The present invention also concerns the needs of an enterprise attempting to manage a number of media properties, especially in different markets. According to present practice, each station is responsible for producing a weekly, monthly, and annual revenue forecast, which is then sent as hard copy to the parent entity. This results in "revenue flash" reports coming in at different times that must all be compiled and the end result calculated. Presently available systems also fail to allow a multi-station enterprise to manage time inventory on a regional or geographic market basis, rather than as individual stations.